Dev Log 11

This week I have ended up changing the visual appearance of the player character and also the animations that were used. I done the same process as I originally did by using Maximo to find the animations. By doing this it also allowed me to practice working on the animation side of coding which is the part I struggle with the most. When going through the process again I was able to remember a lot of the things you need to do in order to get the correct result however the part I struggled with the most was the animation blueprint with the different transitions between them. I also decided to add in a falling animation as previously when the character fell off the map it was playing the walk animation which looked unnatural. 

This helped me to start finalizing the game as I was able to ensure that all animations were working as intended and weren't glitching. my goal is to polish and finalize the game by optimizing performance, refining mechanics, fixing bugs, and enhancing user experience. My next step was moving onto adding in sound effect which I added to when the player hits a checkpoint as well as adding sound to the main menu. To do this I used a play sound 2d node which I was then able to chose which audio file was needed. When sourcing my audio files I used ZapSplat and then converted them into .WAV files for optimization in the project. 

Another thing I decided to change was the lighting in the levels as I thought that with the sand level it would have a better visual appeal if it was a sunset. To change this I rotated the directional light until it had a more orange tint to the world. This was very simple to do however had a really strong impact on the visual appearance of the level.

I also changed the lighting on the first level just so it made the level brighter and had a happier feel towards it.

One final touch I made was adding in a custom curser for when the menus are displayed. For this I needed to source a png of a curser that would match the theme of the game. After I found one that I liked I imported it into the game and created a new widget blueprint and reset the screen size to custom making it 70*70. The next step was to add in a canvas panel and an image which I anchored into the bottom right and selected the curser image. The final step was to go into my project settings then user interface which allowed me to add a new software curser which I set to default and selected the widget that I had created. This improved the visual appearance of the game and I found this very simple to implement but effective.

My final step is to prepare the game by packaging and optimizing builds. I am happy with the outcome of the project by changing the lighting and adding in a custom curser, I believe it has brought the project together and looks a lot more like a finished game. This project is what I had envisioned from the start and has taught me a lot of valuable lessons along with having a deeper understanding of what different nodes do. If I were to do a project like this again I would like to have added in a settings menu so that the player could change the audio.